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How to: Clone a large disk onto a smaller SSD

I just ran into this situation, so I thought I'd share my solution with everyone.

As SSD prices creep lower, more people are buying them to replace HDDs for storing their OS(es) and apps. But SSD prices are still high enough that most people will not be buying an SSD that is a greater capacity then the HDD it is replacing.

In an ideal world you would just start with a fresh Windows install and not worry about this, but that is not always practical for everyone (in my case I'd be risking my marriage as this is my wife's laptop).

Note that everyone's situation will be a little different, depending on how many partitions and how full the drive is.

All the software I link to is free (at least for home use).

In my case I wanted to replace the 320GB drive on a laptop with a 120GB SSD. This laptop has no optical drive, and only one 2.5" bay.

1) Make room.
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The first thing to do is to move any and all data off the drive that you're not going to have on the SSD. Often people use a small SSD for OS/apps and a large HDD for images/movies/etc). Now is the time to move all that stuff, if you havn't already. Obviously you can't cram 150GB of data onto a 120GB SSD, no matter how hard you try.

2) Get an external drive.
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The first step was to acquire a USB (or eSATA) drive large enough to hold the contents of the drive, at least twice. Note that this isn't >twice the total capacity of the drive, but >twice the capacity of the used space. If you are working with a desktop, or any other system where you can do a direct drive -> drive clone then you only need an external drive that holds the contents of the drive, once. In my case the laptop was using ~40GB, so I needed a ~80GB+ drive. I used my trusty 500GB external USB drive.

You could also use another internal (SATA/PATA) drive as well. If you do then just think of it as "the external drive" when reading this guide.

If you like living on the dangerous side and are working with a system where you can conect both your SSD and HDD at the same time you can do it without an external drive, but I wouldn't recommend it.

To backup the drive we want to select the "Device-Image" option:
- Next select "Local Device".
- If you havn't already connected your external drive connect it now and hit "Enter".
- Pick the drive you want to store the image on (your external drive).
- Pick the root directory.
- Pick Beginner Mode.
- Pick "Save Disk".
- Input a name for the image (I use the default).
- Pick the source drive (your original drive).

It will ask you to confirm a few times. Make sure everything is correct and let it do its thing.

I averaged ~1GB/min so plan your time accordingly.

When it is finished reboot into Windows.

5) Shrink your existing drive to fit on the SSD.
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Run Windows disk cleanup and get rid of as much stuff as possible.

Next, use Windows defragmenter to defragment your original drive.

Now we want to to move all the data in the partition to the front, so the partition can be shrunk. Download and install MyDefrag (http://www.mydefrag.com/). Run it, select "Consolidate Free Space" and select drive "C:". Let it do its thing. You can uninstall MyDefrag when it finishes.

If you have more then one partition you want to copy to the SSD defragment and consolidate each partition. Don't worry about system or recovery partitions.

I was able to do it all in Win7 disk management but your mileage will vary depeding on the version of Windows you have as well as how much stuff has to be changed.

My 320GB drive had ~1GB system partition, then a ~300GB Windows partition, and finally a ~19GB recovery partition. I deleted the recovery partition, and then shrunk the Windows partition to ~80GB. This left me with a 1GB system partition, an 80GB Windows partition, and ~239GB of unallocated space at the end of the drive.

Again, you want all your unallocated space at the end of the drive.

Depending on what you have to do and the software you use you may have to reboot at least once.

If something goes wrong boot into CloneZilla and restore the backup image you made in step 3 onto your original drive and try again, moving/shrinking in a different order and rebooting/disk checking in between each step.

When you're done moving everything around run disk checks on all the partitions (you'll probably have to reboot to do this).

After the disk checks finish defragment all the drives, again.

6) Clone your HDD onto the SSD.
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Now reboot into CloneZilla.

If you have both your original HDD and your SSD plugged in you can do a direct "Device-Device" copy. In my case I can't, so I have to use "Device-Image" mode.

It's basically the same as step 3, except we are saving an image of your repartioned/shrunk drive:
- Select "Local Device".
- If you havn't already connected your external drive connect it now and hit "Enter".
- Pick the drive you want to store the image on (your external drive).
- Pick the root directory.
- Pick Beginner Mode.
- Pick "Save Disk".
- Input a name for the image (*** Make sure it's different then the one in step 3, and easy to remember - ie: "shrunk-img" ***).
- Pick the source drive (your original drive).

Again, it will ask you to confirm a few times. Make sure everything is correct and let it do its thing.

When it finishes power-off the computer, remove the HDD, and install the SSD.

Again, it will ask you to confirm a few times. Make sure everything is correct and let it do its thing.

For me this part was faster: ~2.5GB/min.

When it finishes restart the computer and boot off the SSD into Windows.

7) Expand your system partition to fill the SSD.
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Finally, use Windows disk management and/or EASUS Partition Master to exapand your system partition to fill the rest of the room on the SSD. Or make another partition. Or whatever you want.

8) Enjoy your SSD
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You should use your SSD in AHCI mode, if possible. If you're currently in IDE mode run the Microsoft AHCI Fix-it (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976) and then change your BIOS SATA setting from IDE to AHCI.

Don't forget to turn off scheduled defrags. If the SSD is the only drive in the system start the services management app (Run -> "services.msc"), find "Disk Defragmenter", [Alt-Click] -> "Properties", set "Startup type" to disabled. I also turn off Readyboost, Superfetch, and Windows Search (indexing service).

64.
De-Fragmentation
Fragmentation varies across File Systems (FS) and Operating Systems (OS).
Linux and Apple Mac OSX handle fragmentation well.
Windows not so well.
With your SSD, De-Fragmentation is less of an issue than with HDD.
Across all FS/OS, the less data stored.. the less fragmentation occurs.
Across all FS/OS, best not to fully de-fragment Volumes on SSD.
Consolidating Volume Free Space can benefit Logical to Physical Mapping.
See Section C paras 50-52 above.

Collectively in Windows, the above are called PC Accelerators.
Only Prefetch is present in XP.
Their purpose is to pre-load regularly used services/calls into memory (cache).
They allow faster 'prefetched' reading and depend on memory available.
This is mostly redundant with modern SSD, due to their fast read abilities.
Win 7 manages prefetched data intuitively, based on your usage pattern.
Vista does not prefetch data as intuitively as Win 7.
Vista may need manual setting/disable.
Best to let Win 7 manage Windows Accelerators.. do not disable manually.
Don't disable them in Win 7 before running Windows Experience Index (WEI).
Let Win 7 manage them.. by traces during Boot, Idle time and over time.

Prefetch and BootTrace
Prefetch parses both BootTrace data and APPLICATION data.
Depends on your Apps installed and amount of tinkering/reboots you do.
It continues to log/trace to the Windows>Prefetch folder.
Prefetch uses the Task Scheduler process.

Superfetch, ReadyBoot, ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive
All the above Windows Accelerators are present in Win 7/Vista.
Superfetch controls ReadyBoot, ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive.
Superfetch's Service Host is sysmain.dll or known as the Superfetch Service.
Sysmain.dll is in the Windows>System32 folder.

In Win 7/Vista.. run WEI after installing Chipset/VGA drivers, then leave for a week.
After.. if you need to confirm, you can check the following Registry entries:

66.
ReadyBoost is Vista/Win 7 only Non Volatile (NV) cache:
Such as as ReadyBoost enabled USB flash and Intel's Robson/Turbo Memory.
Leave it alone as Windows is intuitive enough to figure out NV Cache for itself.
Default Policy setting for Vista and Win 7 is NOT CONFIGURED.
This means that the default is NV Cache ON.. but only if needed. To check:

TBH I have no idea on the alignment piece. Had to do a bit of Googling to familiarize myself with the concept as it pertains to SSDs. I would make an educated guess that Ghost does not (depending on version?) modify the alignment. When working with Ghost, it has always restored the partitions exactly as they were, except for the total disk size difference. Everything else was the same, sector by sector.